Playing against a plucky Qatar squad who had five of their players disqualified due to eligibility issues, Taiwan made the necessary on-court adjustments to top Qatar 94-78 in the third game of Group B play to finish with a 2-1 mark in the preliminaries of this year’s FIBA Asia Championship at the Wuhan Sports Complex in Wuhan, China, yesterday afternoon.
It was the third straight contest that Qatar had lost because of their player eligibility issues, including two intentional losses by default against Iran and Uzbekistan prior to yesterday’s contest to protest a decision by the tournament official to forbid foreign players whose Qatari citizenship had been granted after the age of 16 through naturalization.
This has been a common process taken by several Asian teams in recent years in the interest of boosting their levels of basketball talent.
Photo: AFP
Contrary to expectations that they would intentionally have all their players foul out and thus lose the game by default, Qatar surprised Taiwan by actually playing them fairly tough in the opening minutes with only five dressed players that resulted in a 5-all tie.
However, Taiwan made the necessary adjustments to score the next dozen before ending the first quarter with a 23-15 lead.
Qatar managed to play the next two quarters against Taiwan evenly with the same five players and actually came to within two points of Taiwan before running out of gas in the decisive fourth.
Leading Taiwan’s offense with a career-high 35 points was Chang Tsung-hsien, whose strong play was the main reason his team were able to run away with the victory.
As for Qatar, Omar Salem’s team-high 30 led a trio of double-digit scorers who nearly pulled off an upset win.
The win, coupled with Uzbekistan’s loss to Iran, gave Taiwan an outright second-place finish in Group B play, good enough to advance to the second round, which is scheduled to begin tomorrow.
“The win over Uzbekistan was huge for us as far as seeding is concerned,” Taiwan head coach Chou Jung-san said after the game.
His troops will have today off to prepare for their match against Lebanon, who finished second behind South Korea in Group A. Tipoff is scheduled for 11am tomorrow at the Wuhan Sports Complex.
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